Is this actually a game or an interactive movie?

[Grail-ums]

It lists itself as an "RPG" but so far from everything I'm seeing this is more of a Telltale "game" where you simply walk around and make choices which feels more like a "point and click" than a roleplaying game.

Are there elements in here such as leveling, battling, and experience gain like most RPGs have?

[Summerfall Studios]

Hey there! We actually had a thread about this pretty recently from our creative director David Gaider. Hopefully this helps clarify things!

[Alt]

Originally posted by Grail-ums:

Are there elements in here such as leveling, battling, and experience gain like most RPGs have?

Do you know what RPG stands for? Role Playing Game. Being RPG doesn't mean that it should have leveling, battling or experience gains at all. There are RPG games without levels and battles. Pure role playing.

Granted this particular title falls more under Visual Novel or Interactive Movie category. But i would say "Game" has a very broad definition. And Visual novels are unquestionably games in the narratological sense. There are a lot of different discussions on this front, if you are interested you can easy find them if you google this topic a bit.

[Grail-ums]

Originally posted by Alt:

Do you know what RPG stands for? Role Playing Game. Being RPG doesn't mean that it should have leveling, battling or experience gains at all. There are RPG games without levels and battles. Pure role playing.

Granted this particular title falls more under Visual Novel or Interactive Movie category. But i would say "Game" has a very broad definition. And Visual novels are unquestionably games in the narratological sense. There are a lot of different discussions on this front, if you are interested you can easy find them if you google this topic a bit.

Yes. Traditionally role playing games, and the GENRE have always entailed some sort of leveling and battling system. The individuals marketing this game should not be advertising it as a role playing game just to try and drum up money from people that do not know any better.

By your logic Madden 2023 can be shoved off as a role playing game. Hell FORTNITE is a role playing game by your logic. The genre was defined and given nothing advertised about this game has anything to do with the RPG genre, and then to have the developer link to an idiotic twitter thread that also does not do anything to answer the question, the point stands this is NOT an RPG game.

[RayofLight]

Originally posted by Grail-ums:

Originally posted by Alt:

Do you know what RPG stands for? Role Playing Game. Being RPG doesn't mean that it should have leveling, battling or experience gains at all. There are RPG games without levels and battles. Pure role playing.

Granted this particular title falls more under Visual Novel or Interactive Movie category. But i would say "Game" has a very broad definition. And Visual novels are unquestionably games in the narratological sense. There are a lot of different discussions on this front, if you are interested you can easy find them if you google this topic a bit.

Yes. Traditionally role playing games, and the GENRE have always entailed some sort of leveling and battling system. The individuals marketing this game should not be advertising it as a role playing game just to try and drum up money from people that do not know any better.

By your logic Madden 2023 can be shoved off as a role playing game. Hell FORTNITE is a role playing game by your logic. The genre was defined and given nothing advertised about this game has anything to do with the RPG genre, and then to have the developer link to an idiotic twitter thread that also does not do anything to answer the question, the point stands this is NOT an RPG game.

Yeah, i share your opinion mate. I hate these wannabe semantic discussions.

Sure, there are subgenres of rpg like crpg,wrpg,jrpg,srpg, etc.
They all entail what you mentioned above. Just "playing a role" makes every game an rpg is such a 1990s take. The same people used to call Zelda alttp /which is an action adventure) back then an rpg.
This is a visual novel, plain and simple.

The devs go immediately on my blocklist for stuff like that. BTW, dear devs, i am your target audience, misuse of rpg tag is shady and needs to go.

[Findanniin]

Or, and bear with me here...

RPG is just a really broad term to begin with.

Stray Gods will be a game where you inhabit a character, and make decisions affecting the plot from their perspective. That makes it an RPG in my books, the dev's books and, apparently, Steam's books.

Final Fantasy X is a game where you inhabit a character and make no decisions affecting the plot. You are simply along for the ride. It does however feature turn based combat, and an exp based level system. That also makes it an RPG in my books, Square's books and Steam's books.

But please include me on your blocklist. It sounds like I'd be in good company.

Incidentally, @Summerfall - for those of us not on Twitter (X?), I'd be interested in the full thread's texts as without an account I appear limited to the first post.

[RayofLight]

Originally posted by Findanniin:

Or, and bear with me here...

RPG is just a really broad term to begin with.

Stray Gods will be a game where you inhabit a character, and make decisions affecting the plot from their perspective. That makes it an RPG in my books, the dev's books and, apparently, Steam's books.

Final Fantasy X is a game where you inhabit a character and make no decisions affecting the plot. You are simply along for the ride. It does however feature turn based combat, and an exp based level system. That also makes it an RPG in my books, Square's books and Steam's books.

But please include me on your blocklist. It sounds like I'd be in good company.

Incidentally, @Summerfall - for those of us not on Twitter (X?), I'd be interested in the full thread's texts as without an account I appear limited to the first post.

coincidentally, the rpg tag is actually gone from the store page, weird how that works with wrong tags, right? Makes your statement obviously factually false, but whatever.

And discussion with you would be like talking to a wall, RPG as a video genre is not broad defined at all, same way like racing game or fighting game is not a broad definition at all, yet people do this weird thing where they are purposely derail the term because of the name Role-playing game.

Spoiler Alert, you take a role in every game you play, hence every game would be a role playing game, right? sounds stupid but you do you, i am out here, but whoever got the tag erased i thank you sincerely, if it was the devs then props to you.

Nothing worse than deciding to pick up a game and play the wrong genre and not give it a chance cause you are in the mood for a rpg, and suddenly you play a visual novel (or anything different).

Happened to me and quite a few people, and those games almost never get a fair rating, even if they are quality games.

Anyways, unsubscribed here and will keep a look out for this game, and of course i will block the troll i replied to.

[Grail-ums]

Originally posted by Findanniin:

Or, and bear with me here...

RPG is just a really broad term to begin with.

Stray Gods will be a game where you inhabit a character, and make decisions affecting the plot from their perspective. That makes it an RPG in my books, the dev's books and, apparently, Steam's books.

Final Fantasy X is a game where you inhabit a character and make no decisions affecting the plot. You are simply along for the ride. It does however feature turn based combat, and an exp based level system. That also makes it an RPG in my books, Square's books and Steam's books.

But please include me on your blocklist. It sounds like I'd be in good company.

Incidentally, @Summerfall - for those of us not on Twitter (X?), I'd be interested in the full thread's texts as without an account I appear limited to the first post.

I can agree with RPG being a really broad term in the modern era where it ends up being abused by companies like this. And I say abused because it's deceptive marketing. "The Roleplaying Musical" is extremely deceptive and in all honesty I might have given this game a shot if it wasn't deceptive. Why?

Because there are a few video games out there that do this already. Actual genre based RPGs that features music as a gameplay device. It's an obscure genre but there is one for the Ps2 that's slipping my mind at this point.

I've argued that the reality of an RPG based video game needs to have some sort of leveling system in place along with stats for your character for it to be an RPG along with a hit point system in some regard. With the current popularity of ARPGs (action RPGs) the old school days of turn based RPGs are going out the window but to call a "choose your own adventure" game an "RPG" is disingenuous and also deceptive/predatory marketing.

[Zombra]

Donkey Kong is an RPG because you play the role of Mario.

Just kidding, just because a game has a person in it doesn't make it an RPG. There is some wiggle room in the term but this definitely does not qualify.

But .. I like CYOAs and VNs sometimes and Stray Gods looks interesting. Just stop calling it an RPG.

[Hawke]

Originally posted by Findanniin:

Incidentally, @Summerfall - for those of us not on Twitter (X?), I'd be interested in the full thread's texts as without an account I appear limited to the first post.

Same here.

On the topic, I think, the key aspect of an RPG is how the player's choice and the character's stats affect the story and the gameplay. Thus, Disco Elysium and Gamedec are RPGs even with very limited and optional combat, while Half-Life is not.

[cats if they were a burger]

nah thats literally insane to say this isnt a "roleplaying musical" whoever said that. no reason to be so far up your ass that you find anything you can to argue and hate against and act snooty against, there is no big plot to deceive people, most likely they saw all these people getting mad about it and took it off, bc its not a conspiracy and they just want to please people

[Summerfall Studios]

Originally posted by Hawke:

Originally posted by Findanniin:

Incidentally, @Summerfall - for those of us not on Twitter (X?), I'd be interested in the full thread's texts as without an account I appear limited to the first post.

Same here.

Hey folks - here's the full thread text for you.

"Recently there have been a few articles calling Stray Gods "the newest RPG from David Gaider", leading some to interpret that as meaning Stray Gods is indeed a full-on RPG. So... a bit of Expectations Management here on what Stray Gods is and is not. 🧵/1

First off, yes, there's a lot of room in the RPG genre for all sorts of games. I think, however, there's an idea of what a "classic" RPG like BG3 (or Dragon Age) includes: inventory, combat, level ups, the whole "walking simulator" deal. Stray Gods is not that. 🧵/2

Certainly, Stray Gods is first and foremost about the roleplaying. Choices and reactivity. You decide who Grace is and what she'll become. But the real stars of the show are the branching, interactive musical numbers - something that's never really been done in games before. 🧵/3

So is it an RPG? That's the closest tag on Steam. Visual novel? There's a lot of breadth in that genre too, but - much like with RPG's - there's an understanding of what visual novels do and that doesn't tell the full story either. Thus, we settled on "roleplaying musical". 🧵/4

Ultimately, Stray Gods is about the experience: an emotional music extravaganza about Greek gods in the modern world that we knew, going in, might be a bit hard to categorize. 😅

We hope you'll join us on August 10th and experience it for yourselves. ❤️"

[Hawke]

Originally posted by Summerfall Studios:

Originally posted by Hawke:

Same here.

Hey folks - here's the full thread text for you.

"Recently there have been a few articles calling Stray Gods "the newest RPG from David Gaider", leading some to interpret that as meaning Stray Gods is indeed a full-on RPG. So... a bit of Expectations Management here on what Stray Gods is and is not. 🧵/1

First off, yes, there's a lot of room in the RPG genre for all sorts of games. I think, however, there's an idea of what a "classic" RPG like BG3 (or Dragon Age) includes: inventory, combat, level ups, the whole "walking simulator" deal. Stray Gods is not that. 🧵/2

Certainly, Stray Gods is first and foremost about the roleplaying. Choices and reactivity. You decide who Grace is and what she'll become. But the real stars of the show are the branching, interactive musical numbers - something that's never really been done in games before. 🧵/3

So is it an RPG? That's the closest tag on Steam. Visual novel? There's a lot of breadth in that genre too, but - much like with RPG's - there's an understanding of what visual novels do and that doesn't tell the full story either. Thus, we settled on "roleplaying musical". 🧵/4

Ultimately, Stray Gods is about the experience: an emotional music extravaganza about Greek gods in the modern world that we knew, going in, might be a bit hard to categorize. 😅

We hope you'll join us on August 10th and experience it for yourselves. ❤️"

Thank you for the post.

Though I haven't started the game yet, I suppose, something like an "interactive musical" or an "adventure musical" would be more fitting. Otherwise, one could expect Shadowrun/Baldur's Gate with occasional songs. Or a rhythm game, since they are usually the ones with music.

[solamon77]

Originally posted by Alt:

Originally posted by Grail-ums:

Are there elements in here such as leveling, battling, and experience gain like most RPGs have?

Do you know what RPG stands for? Role Playing Game. Being RPG doesn't mean that it should have leveling, battling or experience gains at all. There are RPG games without levels and battles. Pure role playing.

Granted this particular title falls more under Visual Novel or Interactive Movie category. But i would say "Game" has a very broad definition. And Visual novels are unquestionably games in the narratological sense. There are a lot of different discussions on this front, if you are interested you can easy find them if you google this topic a bit.

I see where you're coming from on this and you're not technically wrong, but it would be disingenuous to pretend like the term "RPG" doesn't have a certain context when it's used in video games. The type of game you're describing is usually called an "Adventure" game... a term descended from old P&C games. If I were to ask you to recommend an RPG and you gave me Telltale's The Walking Dead or Ace Attorney, I'd think you were messing with me.

[gamerladyp]

I understand why people want to categorize this so they know what to expect. You are being gamed into the middle of a musical. You get to direct the emotional flavor of the story. While I'm fairly early on, it also seems you get to direct which of the cast of characters has a larger role in your journey. If you enjoy musicals and you want to feel like you are in the middle of one, then you will be playing a role in the game.

[JediMB]

Me: "Oh, cool. It was so frustrating when RPG series I loved just turned into action games with some token leveling system thrown in. I'd much rather play a game that is about the actual roleplaying."

Other people, apparently: "But how is it roleplaying if you're not hitting things to make numbers go up?"